An invitation for Serbia to present its ethnographic treasure at Moscow's First Pan Slavic Exhibition in 1867 was motivation for a new generation in the country to show a fresh attitude towards folk heritage. Although Minister of Education Jovan Sterija Popović had issued a decree in 1844 to establish the Serbskonarodni (Serbian Folk) Museum in Belgrade – parallel to the establishment of its Ethnographic Department – only when preparations began for Moscow's International Exhibition was a climate created in Serbia for founding a museum that would specialise in this field.
Viewed from the vantage point of 140 years of history, it is now clear that the Moscow Exhibit gave the impetus for "the first significant systematic gathering" of items from folk life. The invitation to Moscow was quite seriously received in Serbia. Organisation for the event was assigned to a special commission, as per the request of the Serbian Academic Society. A numerous delegation travelled to Moscow to attend this great event, and upon returning with many presents from Moscow, the delegation prepared an extensive report, Serbia's participation was well received because the collection prepared for the exhibition contained quite valuable items, some of which were personally presented by Prince Mihailo Obrenović.
The collection never returned to Serbia, and has remained in the Ethnographic Museum in Saint Petersburg as testimony of the Serbian people in a particular period. Strong ties between the ethnographic museums in Serbia and Russia, however, spurred the museums to organise a Belgrade exhibit in 2005 that brought back part of the original Moscow exhibit; 138 years later, the exhibit Collection Autumn/Winter 1867 allowed Serbian citizens to see for the first time the items that their country sent to Moscow in the 19th century. Velibor Stojaković, the current director of Belgrade's Ethnographic Museum, says the display "enabled us in the present to discover ourselves as we were in the past".
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- At that time, the Principality of Serbia showed great enthusiasm in supporting and financing preparations for this important exhibition, says Stojaković. The state directly subsidised the creation of the "Serbian Collection" through the acquisition of numerous ethnographic items with the engagement of experts from both Serbia and Russia.
- Soon after the Moscow exhibition, Serbia realised it should establish a special institution to preserve and study folk tradition. This idea was widely discussed among members of the Serbian Academic Society, so that Stojan Novaković in 1872 "submitted a proposal and necessary documentation to establish the Serbian Museum of History and Ethnography.
As so often happens in Serbia, however, after recognising the need and clearly formulating a conception, the financial conditions to realise this project failed to materialise. These conditions were fulfilled almost three decades later when Minister Stevče Mihailović, also a prominent Serbian merchant, offered his building at 15 Prince Miloš St. for "establishing a museum of the Kingdom of Serbia". The Ethnographic Department then separated from the National Museum and moved to this building. The Museum was opened in 1901 as an independent institution.
The energy that experts invested into the new museum was really remarkable. For a short time they managed to enlarge the collection from 909 items, 32 books, some photographs, an Album and 'Technomatic' Atlas by Nikola Arsenović, to several thousand museum items. It wasn't long before material from the Ethnographic Museum was ready to be displayed on the international scene. After the World Exhibition in Paris, in 1902 the Ethnographic Museum participated in the First International Costumes Exhibition (Petersburg); in 1905 at the Industrial Exhibition (Liege); in 1906 at the Jubilee Exhibition (Bucharest) and the Exhibition of Journalism (Paris); in 1907 at the Balkan Exhibition (London); in 1910 at the exhibition Serbian Women (Prague); in 1911 at the Jubilee Exhibition (Turin). Its experts were able to react quickly and fulfill various thematic requests that came from Europe. Thus, within 10 years of its official opening, the Ethnographic Museum succeeded in presenting Serbia's folk treasures at many international events, to show its particularity, which today's Europe insists on for its unification (the unity of varieties).
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From the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade |
The Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, a centre of multimedia programmes connected with folk culture, is no longer in the same building where it opened in 1901. Today it is located in a prominent building at 12 Student's Square. The Museum's specialists continue to expand the field of the Museum's activities, applying new techniques in safeguarding and organising its collection. Though frequently lacking resources, the Museum still succeeds in organising high-level exhibitions in its resident building as well as guest exhibitors, displaying monographic or complex ethno-material. The publications that this institution issues off er an insight into traditional culture as seen today, when new methods of research are applied. Thus, the "doors of the past" open to allow one to step with more self-confidence into the future. Announcements, analyses and studies deal mostly with forgotten customs and professions, with objects no longer in use, or with ways of abandoned village life. One issue of the prominent journal Bulletin of the Ethnographic Museum (first issued in 1926 and still being published) includes an article about the last sakadžija in Belgrade. Naturally, this word is unfamiliar to a majority of us, but two centuries ago in Belgrade it denoted an important profession. A sakadžija was a man who distributed drinking water to Belgrade households using a horse-pulled car. He would take water from the Topčider Spring, for example, and after distributing the drinking water he would continue to fill client demands, bringing river water, known as technical water, from the Sava or the Danube rivers and which would be used for washing.
The Ethnographic Museum currently holds more than 160,000 items and its activities, through special departments and library, cover all branches of folk culture. Enjoying the epithet of the oldest ethnographic museum in Southeastern Europe, Belgrade's Ethnographic Museum is also a unique institution that keeps exhibits from traditional cultures of almost all nations and ethnic communities in the former Yugoslavia. Manak's House in Belgrade, which belongs to the Museum, houses among other things the collection presented to it by Hristofor Crnilović, but the House also organises themed exhibitions and courses on traditional craftsmanship or workshops. The permanent display in the resident building is Folk Culture of the Serbs in the 19th and the 20th Centuries. The institution also constantly organises themed exhibitions outside its resident building, For the past 15 years the public has also shown great interest in the International Festival of Ethno Film, also organised by the Museum. | 
